Objectivism are these five claims: (1) Reality is objective. (2) One should always follow reason and never think or act contrary to reason. (I take this to be the meaning of "Reason is absolute.") (3) Moral principles are also objective and can be known through reason. (4) Every person should always be selfish. (5) Capitalism is the only just social system.

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OGGETTIVISMO

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I agree with 1, 2, 3, and 5. In fact, I regard each of those propositions as either self-evident

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ACCORDO

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1. MEANING

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t

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distinguish sense and reference.

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Oedipus, famously, wanted to marry Jocaste, and as he did so, he both believed and knew that he was marrying Jocaste. The following sentence, in other words, describes what Oedipus both wanted and believed to be the case: (J) Oedipus marries Jocaste. However, Oedipus certainly did not want to marry his mother, and as he did so, he neither knew nor believed that he was marrying his mother. The following sentence, then, describes what Oedipus did not want or believe to be the case: (M) Oedipus marries Oedipus' mother. But yet Jocaste just was Oedipus' mother. That is, the word "Jocaste" and the phrase "Oedipus' mother" both refer to the same person. Therefore, if the meaning of a word is simply what it refers to, then "Jocaste" and "Oedipus' mother" mean the same thing. And if that is the case, then (J) and (M) mean the same thing. But then how could it be that Oedipus could believe what (J) asserts without believing what (M) asserts, if they assert the same thing?

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C

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C

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ESEMPIO DI DIFFERENZA TRA SENSO E RDIFERIMENTO

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What the example shows is that (J) and (M) do not express the same thought since Oedipus had the first thought and did not have the second thought.

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c

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Thus, "Jocaste" and "Oedipus' mother" have the same reference, but different sense.

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c

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I speak of the sense and reference of a word, not of an idea. The reason for this is that the sense of a word is the idea associated with it. Ideas do not have senses; they are senses.

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PAROLE E IDEE

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ANALYTIC & SYNTHETIC

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T

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An analytic statement is defined to be one that is true in virtue of the meanings of the words involved.

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DEF ANALITICO

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Peikoff shows in his article on the analytic/synthetic distinction (in ITOE) that, from his theory of meaning, it would follow that no truth can be synthetic. Take an example of a typical, allegedly synthetic statement: (A) All bachelors are less than 8 feet tall. and suppose that it is true. Then, since the meaning of "bachelors" includes all the bachelors in the world, including all of their characteristics, including their various heights, including (by hypothesis) the fact that they are all less than 8 feet, to say that there is a bachelor more than 8 feet tall would contradict the meaning of "bachelor". Hence, (A) is analytically true. Having made the sense/reference distinction, however, we see this is wrong. (A) is analytic only if it is true in virtue of the senses of the words involved (not their reference).

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NN COGLIERE LA DISTINZIONE IMPLICA NN DISTINGUERE SENSO E SIGNIFICATO

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There are sentences like "Every rectangle has 4 sides," "Every bachelor is male," "Every cat is a cat," etc., which certainly appear, prima facie, to have something in common and to be different in some way from "Every rectangle is blue," "Every bachelor is a slob," etc. Every philosopher is able to reliably classify certain specimens of each category and to produce indefinitely many additional examples each of 'analytic' and 'synthetic' propositions that have never been explicitly discussed by any other philosopher before ("Every dodecahedron has 12 faces"). Is this not strong evidence that there is some distinction here?

By an item of "empirical knowledge" I mean something that is known that either is an observation or else is justified by observations. A priori knowledge is that which is not empirical

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DEFINIZIONE TRA A PRIORI E EMPIRICO

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I do not say that the concepts required to understand it are innate or formed without the aid of experience. I only maintain that a priori knowledge is not logically based on observations. In other words, if x is an item of a priori knowledge, then there is no observation that is evidence for the truth of x - but we still know x to be true. This distinction is crucial. Perhaps some experiences have caused us to form certain concepts. And perhaps having these concepts enables us to understand the proposition, x. So our ability to understand the proposition depends on observation.

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C

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I take it that Objectivists deny that there is any a priori knowledge

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OGGETTIVISTI

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3.1. LOGIC IS A PRIORI

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T

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(1) Principles of logic are not observations. You do not perceive, by the senses, the logical relation between two propositions. You may be able to perceive that A is true, and you may be able to perceive that B is true; but what you can not perceive is that B follows from A.

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LE VERITÀ LOGICHE NN SONO XCEPITE DAI SENSI

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(2) The principles of logic can not in general be known by inference.

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LA VGERITÀ LOGICA È ORIGINARIA

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Now it follows from (1) and (2) that: (3) The principles of logic are known a priori. For they are not observations (1) and they are not inferred from observations (2), but they are known. This is the definition of a priori knowledge.

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I PRINCIPI NLOGICI SONO VERITÀ A PRIORI

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3.2. MATHEMATICS IS A PRIORI

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T

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Consider the proposition (B) 1 + 1 = 2, which I know to be true. Is this proposition based on any observations? If so, what observations? In order to learn the concept '2', I probably had to make some observations. I might have been shown a pair of oranges and told, "This is two oranges."

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OSSERVAZIONE E MATEMATICA

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As I previously explained, the issue is not whether observations were necessary in my coming to understand the equation (B) but whether any observation justifies the proposition, i.e., provides evidence of its truth.

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c

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Addition is not a physical operation. It is not the operation of physically or spatially bringing groups together, and the equation (B) does not assert that when you physically unite two distinct objects, you will wind up with two distinct objects at the end. Indeed, if it did, the equation would be wrong. It is possible, for example, to pour 1 liter of a substance and 1 liter of another substance together, and wind up with less than 2 liters total. (This happens because the liquids are partially miscible.) This does not refute arithmetic.

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c

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Even if my experiences with the oranges, the fingers, etc., including all the experiences that helped me form the concepts of '1', '2', and 'addition', were all a long series of hallucinations, I still know that 1+1=2.

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c

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3.3. ETHICS IS A PRIORI

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T

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(1) Moral principles are not observations. The content of every observation is descriptive. That is, you do not literally see, touch, hear, etc. moral value.

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DESCRIZIONE E NORME

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The only possible objection I can think of would be if one thought that the sensations of pleasure and pain are literally perceptions of moral value and evil.

The cut didn't cause pain in virtue of its being bad; it caused pain in virtue of plain old, physical characteristics - just as all sensations are caused by physical phenomena. How cuts cause pain can be explained purely by descriptive physiology and physics, without any ethical claims.

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ADISTACCO TRA DESCR FISICA E CPRINCIPI MKORAL

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(2) Moral principles can not be inferred from descriptive premises.

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FALLACIA NATURALISTA

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'Hume's Law'.)

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To see the truth of Hume's Law, it is best to examine in particular some attempts to bridge the is/ought

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Communism causes poverty, makes people miserable, and takes away people's freedom. Therefore, communism is bad. The premise is apparently a descriptive and empirical fact, while the conclusion is evaluative. Assume the premise is true. My question: Does the conclusion follow from thatalone? No, the conclusion also depends upon the suppressed premises that poverty and misery are bad,

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ESEMPIO: GIUDIZIO ETICO SUL COMUNIAMKO

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Freedom is necessary to our survival. Therefore, freedom is good. Again, assume the premise is true, and ask, Does the conclusion follow from that alone? No, because the argument presupposes that survival is good, and that survival is good is an evaluative premise. If survival is bad, then the conclusion to draw is that freedom is bad, not good.

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Es

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AES DELLA LIBERTÀ

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I want to live. Eating is necessary to live (and also will not interfere with anything else I want). Therefore, I should eat. This requires the assumption that I ought to act on my desires, and/or that my desire to live is a morally acceptable one.

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AL ES DELLA SOPRAVVIVENZA

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(iv) Social cooperation increases our evolutionary fitness. Therefore, we should cooperate. This presupposes that evolutionary fitness is good. One could try to prove this like so: (v) The process of evolution tends toward the survival of the fittest. Therefore, fitness is good. But this presupposes that survival is good and/or that what evolution tends towards is good.

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ESEMPIO DELL EVOLUZ

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If one tries to show that x is good because it produces y, one must presuppose that y is good.

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REGOLA GENERALE

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3.4. THE NATURE OF A PRIORI KNOWLEDGE

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T

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there is a great deal of other a priori knowledge. Here are some examples: A cause cannot occur later than its effect. Time is one-dimensional. If A and B have different heights, then either A is taller than B or B is taller than A. "Inside" is a transitive relation. It is not possible for something to be created out of nothing.

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ESEMPI DI FONOSC A PRIORI

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Reason takes observations (and memories) as input and then, through a certain process (inference), turns out a certain output. This output, according to empiricists, can include a huge amount of knowledge, from my knowledge that the sun will rise tomorrow, to the most elaborate of scientific theories, but all of it is dependent on receiving some input from the senses and/or introspection.

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LA RAGIONE SECONDO GLI EMPIRISTI: UN BELABORATORE

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I say that reason does not only operate on input provided to it by other faculties, but is also a faculty of direct awareness of certain things - namely, all the things listed above. This knowledge that originates in reason is direct in the same sense that perceptions are direct knowledge.

At the beginning of this section (section 3), I defined "a priori knowledge" only negatively, as that which is not empirical. It is now possible to provide the positive characterization: A priori knowledge is the knowledge of pure reason;

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ANUOVA DEF DI VGERITÀ A PRIORI: CONOSCENZA DALLA RAGION PURA

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Reason's foundational knowledge is the awareness of facts about universals.

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4. UNIVERSALS

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t

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4.1. WHAT ARE THEY?

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t

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I have here two white pieces of paper. They are not the same piece of paper, but they have something in common: they are both white. What there are two of are called "particulars" - the pieces of paper are particulars. What is or can be common to multiple particulars are called "universals" - whiteness is a universal.

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BISNCO

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ES DI UNIVERSALE: BIANCO

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A universal is a predicable: that is, it is the kind of thing that can be predicated of something. A particular can not be predicated of anything. For instance, whiteness can be predicated of things: you can attribute to things the property of being white (as in "This paper is white"). A piece of paper can't be predicated of something; you can't attribute the piece of paper as a property

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PREDICATO

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SOLO L UNIVERSALE PUÒ DESCRIVERE

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Whiteness is not a concept; it is a color. When I have the concept of whiteness in my mind, I do not have whiteness in my mind (no part of my mind is actually white).

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L UNIVERSALE È UNA COSA NN UN CONCETTO

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Now I have said that reason gives us direct awareness of facts about universals: In other words, the knowledge of pure reason is that in which not only the predicate but also the subject is a universal. Observations, in contrast, we defined as direct knowledge in which the subject is a particular (for example, "This paper is white" expresses an observation).

(1) Do universals (as defined above) exist? (2) If not, why does it seem as if they do? (i.e., why do we have all these words and ideas apparently referring to them and knowledge apparently about them?) (3) If they do, does their existence depend on the existence of particulars?

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LA DOMANDA

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I TRE PROB.

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The people who answer #1 "Yes" are called "realists", and those who answer #1 "No" are called "nominalists".

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c

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The realists have to go on to answer #3. Those who answer #3 "Yes" are called "immanent realists" (Rand: "moderate realists"), while those who answer #3 "No" are called "Platonic realists" or "transcendent realists".

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NOMINALISTI RESLISTI IMMANENTISTI REALISTI PLATONISTI

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I am not going to try to refute nominalism here, because it is just obviously false. It is obvious that there is such a thing as whiteness, and that's all I have to say about that. (David Armstrong does a good job on it though in Nominalism and Realism.) It also seems clear to me that universals exist in particulars, and so immanent realism is true.

I said earlier that what is wrong with Rand's attempted derivation of ethics is that it requires the evaluative presupposition that life is good, which has not been and cannot be inferred purely from observations.

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L ERRORE DI RAND

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this view has the same problem as all attempts to bridge the is/ought gap,

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c VIOLA LA FALLACIA NATURALISTICA

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how do we know that what promotes life is good? One way to answer this might be to say that this is just the meaning of "good", i.e. "good" just means "promotes (my) life." If you take the Objectivist theory of meaning, however, which rejects the analytic/synthetic distinction and identifies meaning with reference, then this sort of answer cannot be legitimate. It cannot ever be legitimate to answer "How do you know that A is B?" by saying that this is implicit in the meaning of "A". For on the Objectivist theory of meaning, everything that is true of A is implied in the meaning of "A", and everything that is not true of A contradicts the meaning of "A".

if something's being implied in the meaning of our words was a sufficient explanation for how we knew it, we would be omniscient.

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E POI: PARADOSSO DELL OMNISCIENZA. TUTTO È VERO X DEFINIZIONE

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On the other hand, suppose we take up my theory of meaning, in which there is an analytic/synthetic distinction, and only a small subset of all true propositions are analytic (i.e., such that their truth is implied in the meanings of the words involved and such that their denial is contradictory). In that case, it does not beg the question to say that we know what serves life is good because this is the meaning of good, because what the word means can be known immediately, by reflection (without this leading to omniscience)

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TUTTO FILA CON UN ADEGUATA TEORIA DEL SIGNIF

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However, the reply now faces a different problem: The claim that "good" means "promotes life" is now simply false, and it is refuted by Moore's 'Open Question Argument'. That is, given that we make a distinction between the analytic and the synthetic, we can repeat the "Jocasta/Oedipus" argument to show that "promotes life" does not mean the same as "good".

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MA CI SONO ALTRI PROBLEMI

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5.2. RAND'S DERIVATION (?) OF EGOISM

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t

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5.3. IS EGOISM SELF-EVIDENT?

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How do we resolve a dispute when one person says that p is self-evident, and another says that the denial of p is self-evident? (I am not saying an Objectivist egoist would appeal to self-evidence; I am just considering the possibility.) One way is to test the principle in specific cases. That is, by examining certain more concrete examples of the principle, we can get a better view of what it entails. When we do this, it might no longer seem evident.

Nota - Posizione 490

TESTARE NEI CASI CONCRETI

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5.3.1. THE USE OF HYPOTHETICAL EXAMPLES

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Some will still want to know, reasonably enough, why thought experiments are useful. Even if they are in principle capable of proving conclusions about actuality, why are they necessary? Why can we not learn at least as well through the consideration of actual or at least realistic examples? Briefly, the reason is that hypothetical thought experiments provide a means for conceptual controls that often cannot be reproduced in reality. Or, in other words, they provide a way of mentally isolating a causal, explanatory, or logical factor for examination on its own which normally, in the real world, cannot be isolated, and to do so while still discussing a concrete situation. Let me give an example to show what I mean. David Hume once came up with this thought experiment: suppose that in the middle of the night, the paper money in everyone's wallet, safe, or other stash, suddenly doubled in quantity - so there is twice as much money, but no other changes are made. Would the country then suddenly be enormously better off - would we all be twice as wealthy as we are now? No, in fact we would have exactly the same amount of wealth as we presently do, for there would be exactly the same amount of capital around, and the same availability of labor. (Everyone could then double their prices.) What this shows is that increases in the money supply do not translate to increased wealth; it can also be used to explain why increases in the money supply cause inflation. Of course, such a scenario is impossible: all our money cannot magically double in quantity. But that is not the point. The reason the thought experiment is useful is that this way of thinking of it enables you to mentally isolate just the one factor desired for consideration: the quantity of money.

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L UTILITÀ DEGLI ESPERIMENTI MENTALI

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5.3.2. THE CASE OF THE HURRIED OBJECTIVIST

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t

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5.3.3. EGOISM VS. RIGHTS

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5.3.4. EGOISM VS. THE INTRINSIC VALUE OF THE

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5.3.5. ARE THERE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST BETWEEN RATIONAL PEOPLE?

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5.3.6. THE FUNDAMENTAL CONTRADICTION OF EGOISM

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5.4. MY ETHICS

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"ethical intuitionism".

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foundational, a prioriknowledge.

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value is a universal,

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'good' is one of these indefinable concepts because it is absolutely simple;

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If, as I believe, some moral principles are self-evident, then there is no need to derive ethics from biology, physics, or any other descriptive facts. This is how my theory resolves the is/ought problem.

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5.4.1. THE ARGUMENT FROM DISAGREEMENT, PART 1: HOW CAN DISAGREEMENT EXIST?

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 797

5.4.2. THE ARGUMENT FROM DISAGREEMENT, PART 2: BUT HOW CAN WE RESOLVE DISAGREEMENT?